


Under pressure that brings a building down

by Hexx



Series: this love language is music [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Self-Doubt, secret keeping, the whole cast is your know...around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 22:42:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16027481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexx/pseuds/Hexx
Summary: It's not really a common name, and Cassian probably should have asked about it when he had the chance.akaSometimes the world is just too small and this is going to be a problem later, Cassian is sure.





	Under pressure that brings a building down

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song Under Pressure by David Bowie but like...more specifically the MCR cover. Because it just feels more frantic to me.

“Why do you have a cat bed in the living room if you don’t own a cat?”

“Because sometimes Luke brings R2 with him when he comes over and Bodhi is a romantic like that.”

Jyn’s apartment looks like it was mostly decorated by Bodhi. At least, that’s what Cassian thought considering her room looked absolutely nothing like the rest of the apartment. The apartment is warm yellows and oranges, plush pillows on plush seating. A dark wood round table that matched the coffee table and pretended to match the tv stand. House plants in hanging pots that dangled precariously overhead by temporary hooks and draped their foliage over your shoulder as you walked past. Spiced candles and spiced teas and a general sense of calm. It was cozy, though he hadn’t spent a great deal of time in it. Usually it was a quick in and out for Jyn to pick something up or drop something off. It was too small to accommodate the entire melded friend group, and Jyn still seemed uneasy about having someone in her personal space.

A lifetime of walls didn’t come down overnight. Months did not make up for years. And Cassian could respect that.

But where the rest of the apartment was warm and cozy, Jyn’s was almost a woodland onto itself. Greens and grays, pale blues that might have actually been pale purples. More blankets then one person really needed considering they lived in a place with radiant heating and all sorts of knick knacks that lacked any sort of purpose or value to the average person but obviously held a very precious place to Jyn’s magpie sensibilities. The whole space was dark and nest like, a dragon’s horde of personal treasures. Jyn could tease Bodhi about sentimentality all she liked, but it didn’t change the fact that she had pieces of broken glass in plastic soda bottle from every town she’d lived in.

Cassian was leaning against her desk because her unmade bed was too personal and she’d seemed skittish enough inviting him in rather than having him wait by the front door. They were supposed to be meeting the others, minus Kay who had no interest in ‘that sort of nonsense’, to go on a ghost tour in the city’s historic district.  An idea that had surprisingly enough been Han’s idea, though Cassian was sure he’d regret it once he realized it wasn’t like a haunted house attraction at a fair.

“Luke travels with his cat?” He asked, toying with one of Jyn’s hair ties that found on her desk.

“Luke would bring that cat with him to class if he could, he takes him everywhere. They’re practically inseparable and he isn’t even technically Luke’s cat.” Jyn replies from inside her closet, the open door the only thing blocking one another from each other’s view.

“Wait, whose cat is it?” Cassian asked, eyebrows furrowing. He sees a glimpse of her bare arm and her hand as she shakes out her hair, the tips of it swaying into view before falling out of sight again.

“Both cats are Leia’s cats. It’s part of how they met and its…” She trailed off and then leaned around the door to look at him, her face scrunched in confusion. “Wait do you not know how they met?”

“I’ve heard rumors.” He replied, taking in the way her hair framed her face and hung about her shoulders when it was loose.

“I would have sworn Han would have told the whole thing to you, Bodhi and I can’t for the life of us put the whole story together and we’ve heard three different versions of it.” She said, shaking her head and pulling back behind the door to finish changing. “Like we get the gist but…it still all sounds too weird to be true.”

Cassian had to laugh at that, it was easy to imagine how different the renditions could be. He trailed off into a soft chuckle as Jyn closed the closet door and turned to face him, no longer in her laundry day outfit but instead an appropriately comfy fall ensemble. The green of her sweater did amazing things to the hazel of her eyes. She didn’t say anything as she crossed the room to where he stood before gently reaching out and taking the hair tie from his hands.

For a brief instant he wanted to hold on to her fingers, hold her there. But he didn’t, he just stretched out his fingers so the touch lingered as long as he could make it without being needy. Jyn’s skin flushed lightly over her cheeks as she turned away to face her mirror, hands already pulling her locks up and out of her face. Cassian could feel his smile pulled wide across his face as he turned to look out her window. As he did, there out of the corner of his eyes the gloss of an old polaroid picture caught his eye.

Jyn didn’t have many photos in her room, she didn’t have many photos in general. All the ones that could be attributed to her were taped to the fridge in the kitchen, and she featured  in them very rarely. For the most part it was exclusively pictures of Bodhi through the ages, or bizarre road signs from middle of nowhere towns, or museums. Mostly if you wanted to see a picture of Jyn it was a picture of her with Bodhi, her smiles usually small and sheepish. Occasionally a picture of her with a tan skinned redhead covered in freckles looking like they’d been caught in the act of something, or an awkward family photo with someone he’d heard Bodhi call Galen. The only picture of Jyn alone is her backlit by fireworks, screaming at the night sky like a Furie. Jyn didn’t catalogue her self in pictures.

But what had caught his eye, tucked into the edge of a book like a page marker, was a photo of Jyn grinning from ear to ear with her arms wrapped tightly around a man that Cassian was unfortunately all too familiar with.

He had suspected it for a long time. But oh, how he had wanted to be wrong.

All this time he had hoped that the man Jyn spoke of with equal parts bitterness and reverence went by some other last name then Gerrera.

* * *

 

Jyn could fall asleep anywhere and wake up on a dime. It was probably something she’d developed growing up on the run with Saw. It concerned Cassian to notice now just how many of the little things Jyn did had to do with Saw. The way she adjusted on her toes after she walks through a door so that she keeps her back to a wall and the exit within her peripheral vision. The way she eats her meals quickly as if she’d have to get up and abandon it with no warning. The knife she’d been keeping in her boot for months that he somehow hadn’t noticed.

Gerrera’s influence was all over her, saturated into the fiber of her being even though she didn’t seem to notice. And if she did, she didn’t like to attribute it to him. She almost never spoke of him after they finished their project. And Bodhi spoke of him even less, and often times with a small touch of anxiety in his voice.

Cassian wasn’t surprised. Saw Gerrera was intense and not the kind of man he would have pegged for fatherly. Taking Jyn in had seemed like an obligation to her mother, his duty as her Godfather rather than any kind of fondness. Why he had taken Bodhi in Cassian couldn’t figure at all. And he couldn’t bring himself to ask. One night when he couldn’t help himself he cracked open the older files that Draven had sent and tried to find some mention of Bodhi or Jyn, and he got to the part about Saw leaving the US to travel to England for the funeral of an old family friend before he managed to stop himself. The idea of reading about their lives, learning things about themselves that they didn’t willingly want to share with him, made him feel just as sick and tired as any of his deep cover missions had.

It was going to be difficult to keep his job separated from his personal life. An issue he hadn’t had since leaving the military. Here were assets into the true reasons behind some of Saw’s choices and he could not, would not, turn to them.

He tried to tell himself that it was because Jyn wouldn’t care. Why bother to tell her if she’d just be indifferent about it. She cut ties with Saw when he left her behind, he was as good as dead to her. She wouldn’t care if the government was looking for him, they had been looking for him for most of her life. She wouldn’t care about the fact that they were finally getting close. That Cassian had pinpointed his movements to a limited range in the last few years. That Cassian had seen Saw with his own two eyes less than a year ago.

He tried to tell himself all those things. And he knew every one of them to be a lie.

Jyn was loyal to a fierce degree. He saw it in the way she snarled at men speaking a little too loudly about Leia. The way her guilt had sounded fresh when recounting something she and Bodhi had done literal years ago. How despite the disdain dripping in her voice when Saw did somehow manage to come up in conversation her eyes would go soft and distant as if recalling something else.  

No he couldn’t ask her because she’d be angry. She’d be furious at the idea of him spying on her Godfather like it was some kind of personal slight. And Cassian didn’t want her angry with him.

* * *

 

He ran into her coming out of the general health building on campus looking frustrated and on edge. He’d been on his way to the library but had halted the second he spotted her. For a moment he worried she was ill, that something had happened and she hadn’t mentioned it. He was in front of her in a few short jogs and she startled upon his approach.

“Are you okay?” He said by way of greeting, seeing how she scrubbed at her eyes like she was tired. She glanced up at him open mouthed, eyebrows furrowing in confusion before she followed his nervous gaze to the building she had just left.

“Oh. No. I mean, yes I’m okay.” She said, bundling her jacket a little closer to herself and he noticed that in her rush to leave the building she hadn’t even zipped it. “I wasn’t there for a  health reason I was…I had a meeting with Mon Mothma.”

Anyone who had made it through Freshman orientation knew Mon Mothma, a woman of serene grace and unparalleled perception. The campus shrink, as she was most often referred to. Cassian had found himself in her office on more than one occasion himself.

“Oh…” He said, feeling awkward now at how he’d put her on the spot. She toyed with her jacket’s zipper pull for a moment while he tried to collect himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

“It’s fine.” Jyn said, seeming to brush it all off the way she usually did after a few moments of discomfort. “It’s whatever you know, it’s just talking.”

“No, yeah. I mean you’re right.” He agreed, scrabbling for purchase in a normal conversation. “Lots of people do it.”

Jyn nods, satisfied but still a little uneasy. “It’s normal. Healthy.” And Cassian nods in agreement. Before he can think of something else to say, some other supportive notion that is only half formed in his brain Jyn powers on to change the subject. “Where were you going, anyway?”

Thankful for neutral ground and even footing, Cassian gestures back towards the path he’d previously been walking along. “I’m going to the library for a bit, helps me absorb more when I’m there. I don’t know.” He shrugs a little lamely at the notion. “It might be a placebo affect but you know, whatever works.”

“Whatever works.” Jyn echoed back, finally settled enough to properly zip up her jacket and slip her hands into her pockets. “Can I join you?”

“Sure.” Cassian says, smiling brightly at her as she started walking. He fell in step beside her easily. “Though, I am meeting up with Kay there eventually.” Jyn makes a face briefly at that, though it’s mostly for effect then out of a genuine feeling. Yes they bicker, but Kay bickers with everyone, and Jyn doesn’t seem to take it personally.

“I’ll live.” She says finally with a dramatic sigh as she bumps up against his side. He chuckles at that and feels a contented smile pull at his mouth when her fingers reach out and curl around his elbow as they walk. “We can get coffee first though right, Mon Mothma only ever has tea and it just isn’t good enough.”

“Aren’t you British?” Cassian teases at her complaint. And she makes a sour face at him in retaliation.

“Don’t stereotype us, Bodhi drinks enough tea for the both of us so there.” She tugs him off balance ever so slightly in retaliation as he laughs. “Besides, I didn’t really grow up there remember? I was busy running around the 50 states most of my life.”

And just like that Cassian feels himself sober, feels an awkward tightness in his chest at the mention of Saw. No matter how indirectly. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and he wondered if she knew where he was right now. Knew that he was three states away dragging an oxygen tank around with him everywhere he went running what appeared to be a homeless shelter. He wondered if she knew he’d been arrested on her birthday last year for being outrageously drunk in public and railing on about how me missed the best solider in his cadre.

It had been only a week ago that Cassian had placed that title around Jyn’s neck.

The part of him that had been a spy for too long, that took the job he was doing just as seriously as he took his school work was able to ask her “Do you miss him?” Before the rational side of his brain could shut his mouth down. He flinched at the sound of it, knows she felt him do so by the way her hand nearly slips off his arm. But she corrects her grip while giving him a lopsided shrug.

“I mean I guess. Not actively or anything but you know…like subconsciously or something.” She shrugs again and lets her hands slip away as they near the library door. She pulls it open to let him go ahead of her, “It’s like a phantom pain from an old injury, it’s healed but sometimes my body forgets.”

And Cassian isn’t sure if it’s because he’s a glutton for punishment of if it’s because he’s genuinely curious but he finds himself asking “Have you ever tried looking for him? To you know, reconnect?”

Her eyes harden a bit at the question and for a moment he thinks he has overstepped before she exhales with a violent shake of her head. It’s a clearing gesture, he’s observed. Her attempting to ignore a particularly loud or angry thought by shaking herself free of it.

“I never looked for him. And he never looked for me. That’s really all there is to it.”

And Cassian really wished that was true.

* * *

 

He accidentally finds out more then he means to when he drunkenly asks Bodhi how he and Jyn met. Bodhi is just as drunk, maybe more, because he doesn’t appear offended by the question. He doesn’t even seem surprised to hear it, and Cassian wonders how many times people had looked at the visible differences between the siblings and asked. He wonders how many times the question had been asked with malicious intent.

Bodhi Rook was too kind to deserve any of the nasty things he’s had hissed at him over the years of his life. He understands why Jyn is so fiercely protective when Bodhi grins at him with that wide smile and timid deer eyes.

“We were in the same orphanage for a few months, and she broke a kid’s tooth out of his mouth for trying to lock me in a trunk.” He said with pride, gaze turning about the room to locate his sister so he could gaze at her affectionately. She was sleeping, tucked into Kay’s side while he snored, head hanging off the back of the couch. Cassian thought maybe they had been fighting earlier but he couldn’t remember. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they had literally tired themselves out bickering over Mark Twain and Jane Austen, they were the type to. “And when Saw came back for her after he was done in Cuba, Jyn told him she wouldn’t leave without me.” Bodhi hiccups as he draws Cassian’s gaze back to his face. He looks faraway for a moment, glassy eyed. “And so he just stared at me for a few minutes, and then put me in his car.”

“Just like that, huh?” Cassian asked, voice soft. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting.

“Yep.” Bodhi says, popping the p at the end of the word. “Nobody had any sway over him, except Jyn. And only because his own stubbornness had rubbed off on her.”

“She doesn’t really talk about him.”

Bodhi shook his head, a nervous laugh escaping him. “No, no she doesn’t. Not even to me, and I was there for part of it.” Bodhi yawns and stretches his legs out in front of him, slouching down in his chair. “She tells me she doesn’t care anymore, that she doesn’t care about him at all. But she’s lying.”

“You can tell?” Cassian asks, picking at the label on an empty soda bottle that had been abandoned on the table nearby. It came off in a chunk and then began to shred into thin little lines, making the bottle look like it had been scratched up. Bodhi laughs again, this time full of mirth.

“I’m her brother, of course I can tell when she’s lying.”

Cassian sets the bottle down a little harder then he means to, and he and Bodhi watch it topple to the side and bounce onto the floor. They both get a good chuckle at it. And Cassian tries not to remember what he heard in the morning, because he doesn’t want to accidentally make Bodhi an asset, and he doesn’t want to think about the fact that part of Jyn probably still loves Saw, way deep down.

* * *

 

“I just downloaded your most recent report. When can I expect the next one?” Draven asked, voice grainy through the phone.

“There won’t be another report.” Cassian replied, leaning against the front door to his apartment. He’d be able to hear Han coming from a mile away from this spot. “What I sent you this morning is my final assessment, sir.”

The pause Draven takes is loaded, palpable in the fist Cassian has been clenching and unclenching at his side.

“Is there a reason why you’re choosing to end your assignment here?”

“I feel it’s justified. Gerrera doesn’t appear to be making any plans on either a large or a small scale. It’s in my assessment sir but the short of it is, I think his age has caught up to him. As far as I can tell the shelter isn’t a front for an operation, it’s his retirement. “

Draven is silent again but Cassian can hear him clicking away at his computer, no doubt opening the file in question to read it for himself.

“If you’re unwilling or unable to continue to study him that’s fine Captain. I can assign an on duty agent to the case. But it doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re telling me.”

“It isn’t.” Cassian said, a little more forcefully then he thought he would have to. “I’m saying he doesn’t need to be actively watched at all.”

Draven sighs heavily through his nose and Cassian hears the way his chair squeaks as he leans back in it, away from his desk. Cassian imagines him staring down at the phone on his desk, arms crossed and brows furrowed as he tries to pull whatever Cassian isn’t saying from thin air. Draven has always been perceptive, but thankfully this time Cassian is a hundred miles away and this whole interaction is faceless.

“I’ll take your assessment into consideration.” He says finally, and Cassian has to pull the phone away from his face to keep the General from hearing his sigh of relief. “And I appreciate all your hard work on this matter for me. I am glad I could count on you.”

Cassian feels warm at the praise, knows that it’s genuine because Draven has never been one for flattery. It leaves him feeling buoyed as he says goodbye, but it doesn’t compare to the pressure that comes off his shoulders when the call finally disconnects. It’s over, it’s done. He can start burying everything deep down again. He can forget about it, forget that he knows anything about Saw that he didn’t learn from Jyn’s own lips.

Maybe one day, if she ever decides to tell him about Saw, he can admit to knowing these things. Maybe one day he can offer to take her to the shelter he runs, if she ever mentions wanting to see him again. Maybe one day she’ll be able to hear his name without forcing her eyes to the ceiling to keep from crying while she twists her mouth into a snarl.

Maybe one day she’ll be alright with him not saying anything to her about it now, but of all the things Cassian thinks, he thinks that that one is a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> I have another piece that is from Jyn's POV that needed context for a huge chunk of it so here is Cassian, providing anxiety and context.


End file.
